by Emily Belden
next to me this whole time until I went to work.” I leave out
the part where he stayed at home while Casey dragged me to
the bar Saturday night.
“I don’t care if you kept him in your bank vault. Anywhere
besides Pala, where I thought he was, where I put him on pur-
pose, is unacceptable for any length of time. For one minute,
Charlotte, try to think about me in this situation. Imagine not knowing where the ashes of your only child are. It’s a little
unsettling, isn’t it?”
I don’t appreciate the accusations she’s throwing at me, her
news source on all this. If she was so concerned, she should
have set up a Google alert for the Pala Mausoleum and she
would have been the first to know. I’ve done so since Decker’s
return and I’ve already gotten news hits. In fact, there’s even a farmer’s market there later this week and proceeds will go
to fire damage relief efforts. So there.
“Again, I’m sorry, Debbie. But he’s safe and the urn is ob-
viously fine, so please try to calm down.”
“Calm down? I’m glad that he’s managed to make it this
far, Charlotte. Really, I am. But I think it’s pretty clear that he should stay here with his mother and father.”
I know I mentioned Debbie is an irritatingly composed
person, which she is. Until she isn’t. This quick-to-boil de-
meanor has always thrown me for a loop. She can make any
situation unnecessarily tense and difficult, skewing my ability to think clearly. She got like this in the hospital, too, which is how he wound up in Pala in the first place. I can’t let her
take control again.
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“Debbie, I can assure you that Decker’s remains were not
just banging around in the back of my trunk like a two-liter
of Diet Coke, okay? This situation, though unexpected, isn’t
going to just be some sort of afterthought for me. In fact, it’s been my only thought since it showed up at my door.”
“Good god, I feel like we’re back in the hospital again,
Charlotte, arguing about semantics.”
That makes two of us.
In an attempt to keep my composure and stay focused on
the point of the visit, I re-enter the conversation using information only—data has been, and forever will be, my strong
point. I made it that way since the day I knew we lost Decker
for good.
“I understand that he was your only son, but I’m his wife.
And I need some time to think about the right thing to do
with these ashes. Next-of-kin doesn’t just go away when he
passes, Debbie.”
“You were,” she says point-blankly and seemingly out of nowhere as she stares out the window at her glistening salt-water pool.
“Were what?” I say.
Her eyes gaze back at me. They seem to have darkened to
more a midnight blue in the last few seconds.
“You were his wife five years ago. Your marriage to our son ended when his life did. Now, I think it’s lovely that you’ve
had the opportunity to spend a night with his remains, but
I strongly suggest that you leave the urn—the urn that I had
handmade specially for Decker by a master ceramicist in the
hills of Argentina—with me. Letting me handle this again is
the decent thing to do.”
“Because letting me handle it would be a disaster?”
“No, because I’m the one woman who will always place him at the center of her heart. You, you can get another husband.
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I can’t have another son. What happens when you move on,
Charlotte? When Decker becomes nothing but a memory, a
distant one at that? Do you think my son will ever just be a distant memory to me?”
I don’t know what she expects from me right now. Decker is
a core part of me. Why is this woman punishing me for some-
thing that I cannot change? Stick to the facts, I remind myself.
“Debbie, you chose to put him in Pala and now…that place
doesn’t exist anymore. Considering you had no idea about
that, I highly doubt you have a backup plan just locked in
and ready to go. And neither do I. So we’re even there. But
let’s not forget there’s a legal reason Decker was sent to my
address and not yours.”
Just then Sandra, the housekeeper, enters the room, a sea
of children standing behind her in bathing suits and goggles.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Austin? The pool party is here,” she an-
nounces.
I check the time on my Apple Watch. It’s 2:30 p.m. exactly.
Is this the company she was expecting? A gaggle of preteens
who want to swim in the neighbor’s pool?
“Take them around the back, please. All of them. I don’t
want anyone cutting through the house. I just had the carpets
steam cleaned with filtered eucalyptus water.”
“Yes ma’am,” Sandra says as she leaves the room.
“And tell them no diving!” Debbie shouts. “I don’t need a
lawsuit on my hands when someone breaks their neck on the
bottom of the shallow end.”
“Who are all these kids?”
“Kurt and I volunteer our pool for the neighborhood to
enjoy on Mondays in the summer while school’s out,” she says.
That’s way too noble for Debbie, so I figure one of these
kids’ parents must be her ticket to skipping the membership
line at The SoHo house or something.
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“It’s time for you to go, Charlotte,” Debbie says as she pro-
pels herself off the velvet seat cushion and begins walking
back toward the kitchen. “I’m sending Sandra to get the urn.”
I am momentarily distracted by little kids cannonballing
into the water just outside. So much so that I almost miss her
casual declaration.
“No, you’re not, Debbie,” I say, trying my best not to sound
combative.
She stops in her tracks and slowly turns back around. Deb-
bie’s gaze shifts ever so slightly to me and our eyes connect.
Her expression screams, You bitch.
As if I needed another reason, that look is my cue to leave. I
stand up and straighten out my skirt. On my way to the door,
I just about steamroll a stringy tween.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter under my breath, startled.
“Do you have any pool noodles?” the squeaky-voiced boy
says.
Debbie rushes to put her hands on his wet shoulders and
face him back toward the pool like a round of Pin-The-Tail-
On-The-Donkey.
“No wet feet on the shag rug, please!”
I watch her interact with the boy—all stiff and rigid—and
on the way out think to myself how it was probably a good
thing Decker and I didn’t get around to having children.
“Oh, Charlotte. I wanted to ask. Does it ever haunt you?”
Debbie says before I clear the living room.
I don’t turn around because I don’t want to see the look on
her face accompanying her call
ous tone.
“Does what ever haunt me?” I say, my eyes locked on their freshly steam-cleaned flooring.
“All the damage you did to our family the day you decided to yank our son off life support?”
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I’m not sure which was more brutal to wake up to this
morning: a stream of texts from Debbie Austin asking if I’ve
“changed my mind about the urn” and if I “want to come over
and talk again”? Or my boss, Zareen, begging me to bypass
the office and instead attend an influencer event by myself at
a new gym in West Hollywood.
As far as Debbie is concerned, it’s clear she is suffering from what I learned in therapy is called a “Rage Hangover.” It’s
when you do things and say things you normally wouldn’t
and otherwise fly off the handle in a moment of emotional
desperation, but then eventually calm down and realize you
were being, for a lack of better words, an ass about stuff. People don’t often apologize in their rage hangovers, so much as they
just act all nicey-nicey after in an effort to convince everyone involved they should just silently agree to sweep things under
the rug. For the record, I’m not sweeping shit.
That last comment about pulling the plug was a low blow,
and she knows it. As the sole name on the DNR, it took a lot
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for me to come to the conclusion that simply having a desire
to keep someone alive isn’t enough to make them stay alive
and experience any sort of quality of life when their chance at such is less than 1 percent. It wasn’t back then and it certainly isn’t now. Which is why it stings to know she’s hanging the
power of attorney over my head like I actually got away with
murdering him or something.
So as a thank-you for reminding me of the part I played in
his death, I simply responded to Debbie that I can’t text right now because I’m working a very important client event at
West Hollywood’s new hot-cycle studio, WeHot. The more
I namedrop, the more I’m convinced she’ll put two and two
together with that Forbes article and realize for once that I’m a smart and capable woman who can handle rehoming her
husband’s urn.
It sounds like the name of a menopause research center, but
WeHot is actually a place that combines hot yoga with spin
class. Not at all my style, but there’s definitely a market for it here in LA and frankly I’m surprised it took this long for
someone to invent it. I figure that if my services are needed
and Casey is at home keeping watch on the urn (she’s either
off Tuesdays or doesn’t start work until the sun goes down,
I’m not entirely sure of her schedule/circadian rhythm), then
being here on official Influencer Firm business is actually the perfect distraction for the fact I’ve got an issue at home that would just make the most fascinating Today show segment.
So I take the opportunity to embrace my work and lean in—
or pedal out?—of the saddle, whatever empowering slogan
makes sense for this situation.
Normally a programmer like me wouldn’t even have to
come to a client event like this, let alone try the product firsthand, but since Monica is on her honeymoon, we are a little
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The Influencer Firm the longest, which means when it comes
to sending me or one of the new summer interns, there really
is only one option as to who’s truly qualified enough to make
the locker room area of this trendy boutique their office for
the morning. And that’s me.
Our client list is growing like a weed thanks to that cheeky
little write-up in Forbes. For the first time in company history, I have a feeling my boss is going to cast a few full-time offers out into the intern pool at the end of August. Even more so
if—I mean, when—we land the Voyager account.
Given the fact I’ve been pressed to consider stats and make
decisions a few times in my life, I can’t help but look at ev-
erything with an analytical eye. And now that the dinner is
officially on the books, I’m estimating there’s a 90 percent
chance that the company who is putting sustainable shoes on
the map will come on board in the next 2.3 weeks.
Two point three weeks, eh? Even though work helps me put
Decker out of mind for the moment, I can’t help but think:
will the ashes of my dead husband still be sitting in my house
in 2.3 weeks? What aha moment could I possibly have about
this thing in the next 2.3 weeks? Time. Is. Ticking.
“Are you okay? Can I get you a cold towel or something?”
“Everything’s fine,” I tell Gemma, our client who’s caught
me skipping out of the spin class extra early. “I just needed to grab my computer and run a quick script on the social media
engagement going on inside the room.”
I hope that my über-flushed cheeks don’t completely con-
tradict the very chill excuse I just gave for abandoning my
spin bike.
“What was your name again?” she asks in a semiconde-
scending way.
“Charlotte.”
“Do you think there will be stats generating already, Char-
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lotte? The class just started seven minutes ago.” Gemma taps
her Apple Watch and flashes the time my way. It’s a techy move
on her part—probably to counter the social media jargon I was
just throwing down—but I have one of those fancy watches
too. I’ve been on the wearables train ever since these things
were available for preorder, so I’m not all that impressed. I tap mine to bring it into frame as well. Except mine is showing
another new Tinder message first instead of the time.
Despite Gemma’s concern, this is what I do for a living. And
for the record, posts have been accruing since @PrettyNFun007
uploaded a mirror selfie this morning with the caption Head-
ing to @WeHotLA to get my sweat on! and therefore—
“Stats are coming in, yes. Now I need to make sure every-
one’s Snapchatting like they’re supposed to be,” I confidently
say back to her. “I’m sure your account executive, Monica,
told you before she left for her honeymoon that impressions
are everything if you want WeHot to take off. After all, that’s what you’re paying The Influencer Firm to do, right?”
I shoot her a little wink, then bury myself back into my
screen. A subtle reminder of the hefty price she has paid to be popular on social media is exactly what I needed to put a pin
in that judgmental stare of hers. Now if I can just get her to
leave me entirely to my devices, that would be the icing on
this half-baked, kill-her-with-kindness cake.
“Well, let me know if you need anything, I’m going to san-
itize the bathrooms.” Gemma places an iced-lavender waffle
weave towel on the bench next to me. I wonder for a moment
that it’s soaked in like it’s some kind of Starbucks specialty
drink. She whips her perfect Ariana-Grande-esque ponytail
around and heads back to the front desk. Not a single inch
of her body jiggles, especially not her fake double Ds. That’s
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the difference between a New York girl like myself and an
LA chick like Gemma. My closet has Spanx, hers does not.
While it obviously can’t hurt to check my reports this early
on, I’ll admit that I ghosted that spin bike simply because I
was over it. That, and…exercise still freaks me out. I know
a spin bike isn’t a race, but since driving the heart rate up is how Decker had a stroke, I guess The Jeaner isn’t the only one
who is oscillating between what if and who’s next.
That said, Gemma’s question is valid. If I was that quick to
leave the sauna-like group exercise class, will there be others who jump ship in the near future, too?
The answer is simple: no. There won’t be. That room is full
of young twentysomethings who are way too worried about sweating off the fried goat cheese balls they ordered from
SUR this weekend. By no means would anyone in there take
workout cues from me—a pushing-thirty exercise hack who lasted a mere five minutes in the saddle before slumping over
the handlebars.
Finally, it’s just me and my computer and the SoCal sun
pouring through the windows of WeHot, which heats up the
smell inside like dinner simmering on the stove. Only the
ingredients in this stew are Chanel No. 5 and kitschy Insta-
gram handles. I remind myself (not for the first time in the
past twenty minutes) how this client is paying a cool twenty-
five grand for my company—for the company I work for,
rather—to be here.
I find myself with too many tabs open on my laptop and
distracted by one in particular. Well, two, to be honest. The
Google search results for “los angeles mausoleums” that I
haven’t yet gone through and an old Match.com tab from a few
days ago. The Match.com tab is blinking with a new message
from William, a thirty-four-year-old artist from the Atwater
Village neighborhood, who just messaged me.
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